Renal diet restrictions predialysis- What it is all about?

Progression of the renal disease is tough to understand because it doesn’t hurt – that means you do not have pain once the kidneys are broken. But the damage is done every day when you have issues like diabetes or high blood pressure and you do not get them in check. There are many renal diet restrictions predialysis that must be followed by people suffering with chronic kidney disease. Here are some of them:

Sodium Limitations

Everyone with renal disease should follow renal diet restrictions predialysis and limit their sodium intake to 2,000 mg per day. It will likely be a difficult number to achieve, and you will need to make much more meals at home to get it done.

Sodium is common and it’s not just the sodium that you add to your meals. Sodium found in numerous products, especially in processed foods. It is advisable to eliminate all the additional salt from your diet plan to reduce blood pressure as well as save the renal system. Read the labels on all salt based items to find out how much you can healthily afford to have.

Potassium Restrictions

For a person following renal diet restrictions predialysis, it is important to limit the amount of potassium he eats. In the initial stages of the disease, your renal system may have no problem in handling the amount of potassium that you throw at them. But as you advance within kidney disease, it is necessary to reduce the amount of potassium you consume.

Potassium is a nutrient that controls muscle and nerve function. One most important muscle — the heart – beats at a constant speed because of potassium. Apart from that, potassium is needed to preserve the fluid and electrolyte balance in the body.

For the potassium to perform these functions effectively, blood potassium levels must be kept at between 3.5 and 5.5 mEq/l. The kidneys help keep blood potassium at these levels. Potassium levels which are too high or too low can be dangerous. Your physician will do a blood assessment and tell you if you should reduce the amount of blood potassium in your diet. It’s mostly people with chronic kidney disease who need to check on their potassium.

Phosphorus Limitations

Kidneys help manage the level of phosphorus in our body. If there is a problem in the renal system, eventually you will likely have elevated phosphorus (hyperphosphatemia). In turn increased phosphorus levels decrease the level of calcium in the blood, which causes bone disease.

Often 800-1000 milligrams (mg) phosphorus per day is the limit for somebody following renal diet restrictions predialysis. You should discuss with your physician what amount of phosphorus to have, and then try to reduce the phosphorous intake by lowering the high phosphorus meals that you eat.

Reduce your consumption of protein

Right now you may be like most people who fill half of their plate with chicken, meat or fish. This is too much of protein for an average person, and if you have a kidney disease, it is really an excessive amount. 2-3 ounces of meat are enough for a person to fulfill his/her daily protein requirements. It is enough for an individual to maintain their health.

For example, if you were to have 60 grams of protein for the day, you could eat it as 10 gm for breakfast, 25 gm for lunch and 25 gm for supper. That would be about 1 egg at breakfast and 3 ounces of meat at each of the other meals. It does not sound like much, but you have plenty of other items on your plate.

Following renal diet restrictions for predialysis takes a little work, and I have tried to make it as easy as possible. The goal of this diet is to lower the protein and sodium that you eat to allow your kidneys to continue to do their job in your body.

Start With One Part Of The Renal Diet Restrictions

Vegetables (Photo credit: Muao)

When we talk about renal diet basics, it’s important to understand that the renal diet can be complicated. You have to pay attention to your beverages, meals, and snacks. Any of those items can cause problems for your kidneys or help your kidneys to improve. I know you really want to have your kidney health improve so let’s talk about the renal diet basics that you need to know to improve your nondialysis kidney disease and follow your renal diet restrictions.

Protein Is The Most Important

One of the most important changes you’ll need to make as you approach stage 3 and stage 4 kidney disease is to control the amount of protein that you eat. Your renal diet restrictions will need to limit the amount of protein that you eat to your weight in kilograms or less. Many dietitians recommend a renal diet restriction of .8 g of protein per kilo gram of body weight.

You probably already eat too much protein in your diet. If you weighed 150 pounds, that would equal 68.2 kg [Divide 150 pounds by 2.2 = kilograms]. Which is 68 g of protein per day if you’re going for one gram of protein per kilo gram of body weight. Or 54.5 g of protein if you are doing .8 g of protein per kilogram.

1 ounce of protein equals 7 g of protein. Most carbohydrates have 3 g of protein per serving. A serving is approximately 15 g of carbohydrate. So when you take into account both the meat that you leave for the day and the grains, bread, and starches that you ate for the day you are easily getting over 68 g of protein.

Animal protein is one of the biggest sources of protein that you will have and it’s the one that you should concentrate on the most controlling as part of renal diet restrictions. So if you go over a little bit but it’s based on non-animal protein sources, your kidneys can handle that much easier than overloading on the amount of animal protein that you ate.

Start reading labels and figuring out how many grams of protein are in the food that you eat, and make sure to check for serving sizes specifically so you know how many servings you are eating. Then try to stick to an amount of protein that is between .8 – 1 g of protein per kilogram of body weight.

Sodium Is Critical To Manage

Thinking about renal diet restrictions you should also look at sodium limitations. Your kidneys are susceptible to high blood pressure, and high blood pressure is susceptible to the amount of sodium that you eat. If your blood pressure is high it damages the small blood vessels in your kidneys and overall causes more damage to your body and decreases the effectiveness of your kidneys as filters.

Sodium is an easy thing to look at, because it’s on the food label. Sodium is not an easy thing to reduce in your diet as part of renal diet restrictions, unless you are willing to cook more food to home and carry your sack lunch to work. Cooking at home is one of the sure fire ways to reduce sodium as long as you don’t add it when you’re cooking.

But sodium is a really critical mineral to manage and understand how much is in your food. Just reading the labels will make you much more aware and help you understand how you can reduce it.

Make Sure You Are Eating The Right Amount Of Foods

Do you find yourself really hungry when following your renal diet restrictions? Have you severely limited what you’re allowing yourself to eat so you don’t hurt your kidneys? I understand that mentality and I applaud you for working really hard to limit the damage to your kidneys. But I would recommend that you look a little closer at just decreasing the amount of protein that you take in and limiting the amount of sodium in the foods that you eat to make the renal diet restrictions a little easier to cope with.

Foods that are high in sodium are typically canned vegetables and fruits. Canned soup is also high in sodium. Eating more fresh vegetables and fresh fruits will allow you to reduce the amount of sodium that you take in. If you have high blood pressure this would be good for your blood pressure as well.

Add the low sodium of phosphorus vegetables to your meals such as zucchini, squash, and radishes or beets. Eat white bread instead of whole-grain bread, and that will help you reduce the amount of phosphorous and potassium in your diet.

And cut back on your protein servings of meat and milk products for protein renal diet restrictions. Try to eat only about 3 ounces of meat or poultry, which is the size of a deck of cards, at a meal. For your snacks, you can eat some seeds or nuts that are filled with good omega-3 fatty acids.

You shouldn’t feel hungry all the time, and if you are it means that you need to be working at finding those low potassium, low sodium foods that you can eat for your renal diet.

One sure way is to check out our renal predialysis recipe meal plans that are available on this website so you’ll know exactly what you can have for dinner seven nights a week. Following a meal plan is easier when someone has done the work for you, and that’s something that we provide every week for less than the price of coffee per day. And I’m talking about McDonald’s coffee, not Starbucks.

Control Kidney Disease with Renal Diet Restrictions

Kidneys are the major filtration organs and they remove electrolytes, excess fluids and wastes from your body effectively. Kidney disease endangers the smooth functioning of kidneys. Following a renal diet is a nutrition therapy and it is highly beneficial for people with kidney diseases to follow the renal diet restrictions to meet the needs of their body. Renal diet restrictions are helpful for reducing the amount of stress put on kidneys. It is also effective for preventing electrolyte disturbances and fluid through correct meal plans.

Importance of Renal Diet Restrictions

Patients with chronic kidney disease must make some changes in their diet to maintain a balance of fluid, minerals and electrolytes. This is helpful for restricting salt, phosphorous, potassium, and protein as well as and getting enough calories. Diet change is inevitable if you need to be put on dialysis, and by following the renal diet restrictions during the period prior to dialysis. Waste products cannot be expelled completely with dialysis alone. Most of the dialysis patients urinate very little. This leads to the building up of excess fluid in lungs, heart and ankles. Therefore, a pre-dialysis diet is inevitable for removing waste products effectively from your body. At the same time, renal diet restrictions should not affect your health adversely. If you do not consume enough calories daily, it may leads to breakdown of body tissues, because your body needs the correct balance of protein and other components.

Foods In Renal Diet Restrictions Help with Pre-Dialysis Diet Needs

Fluids

Kidneys are responsible for removing excess fluids from blood and excrete it through urine. Kidneys fail to remove fluids properly if they are damaged. It leads to the accumulation of fluids in your body and causes increased blood pressure and tissue swelling. Renal diet restrictions help to reduce the intake of daily fluid to meet your needs but not too much to cause problems. You should closely follow any fluid restrictions that your doctor or dietitian gives you and make sure that you know what foods are considered fluid.

Carbohydrates

Though carbohydrates provide energy, the consumption of foods with high carbohydrates is not good for people who are overweight or have diabetes. Your pre-dialysis diet must contain less protein than you probably are used to and you may be tempted to fill up on carbohydrates. So, you should include more unprocessed vegetables, grains, breads and fruits in your diet. It is helpful for providing energy, vitamins, minerals and fiber in your body. The less these foods are processed, the more they retain the valuable nutrients of vitamins, minerals and fiber that are important in a renal diet with restrictions.

Protein

Restriction of protein intake is essential for avoiding the creation of urea, a waste product. If there is urea in your body, kidneys need to work hard to expel it. If you have kidney disease, this extra work can further worsens the functioning of your kidneys. At the same time, protein is essential for building body muscles, repairing tissues and fighting infections. So you should not reduce the consumption of protein too much. It should be dependent on your condition and circumstances. A dietitian can help you to include the right balance of protein in your pre-dialysis diet. Protein content is very high in foods such as eggs, pork, poultry, fish, etc. Most people following a predialysis diet consume between 45-75 gm per day of protein.

Phosphorous

You should also monitor the level of phosphorous in your food very closely if you have kidney disease. If the level of phosphorous in your body is too high, it causes low calcium and itching. Due to the low level of calcium, body begins to pull calcium from your bones and it ultimately leads to weakened and brittle bones. Therefore, the foods such as cheese, yogurt and milk should be limited. Some dairy foods such as cream cheese, butter, tub margarine, sherbet, brie cheese, ricotta cheese, etc contain very low phosphorous. Lots of fruits and vegetables should be included in your pre-dialysis diet as per the directions of a dietitian.

Electrolytes

Maintaining the balance of electrolytes, such as potassium, sodium and phosphorous, is the other important function of kidneys. Improper functioning of kidneys cause disruption in electrolytes. Blood pressure increases tremendously due to the increased level of sodium in the diet. Fruits such as peaches, watermelon, tangerines, plums, pineapple, berries, apples, cherries, pears, grapes, and vegetables such as broccoli, peppers, onions, lettuce, green and wax beans, eggplant, cucumber, celery, cauliflower, carrots, cabbage, etc can be included in your pre-dialysis diet. However, your dietitian can prescribe a renal diet, which restricts the intake of electrolytes effectively.

Calories

Intake of enough calories is essential for maintaining body weight and its normal functioning. Protein is restricted in renal diet, so it is difficult to meet the calorie needs of the body. In order to ensure enough calories in your pre-dialysis diet, your dietitian can recommend sources of concentrated calories that don’t have too much protein and meet your renal diet restrictions. It includes unsaturated fats such as vegetable oil, canola oil, hard candy, honey, jelly, etc.

You can control kidney disease effectively if you strictly follow renal diet restrictions, dialysis and medication. Usage of alcohol and cigarettes must be avoided or reduced. Consult a doctor or dietitian for getting to the right pre-dialysis diet plan to meet your renal diet restrictions.

Meal plans are available that meet your renal diet restrictions and are written by a registered dietitian to make your life easier!